The popularity of online games has grown over the years. Conventional online games are provided through gaming platforms, such as Facebook.com, Kabam.com, Zynga.com, Bigpoint Games, Steam, etc. Within online games and/or gaming platforms, gaming communities have developed to promote group-based game play. The gaming communities may be known as affiliations. The affiliations facilitate online game play to perform tasks within the online game, facilitate actions within the online game amongst members of the affiliation, and facilitate actions to compete against other affiliations.
Membership with an affiliation may impact retention of users within the online game. That is, users of an online game that are members of an affiliation may be more likely to spend more time and resources within an online game. Conventional affiliations within online games may be all-inclusive, accepting all users that desire membership to the affiliation, while other affiliations within an online game may be extremely exclusive. Certain affiliations grant memberships to new users based on a need for additional members or based on in-game performance metrics of users. As such, affiliations may become cliques, where membership to an affiliation is hard or impossible for new users to obtain. Additionally, joining an affiliation may seem like a daunting task to new users.
Accordingly, alternative approaches including incentives for users that are members of an affiliation may encourage affiliations to accept new members and/or encourage current members of the affiliation to remain active and/or increase their activity in the online game.
Providing players virtual items in games is known. Players of games often pick-up, purchase, obtain or win virtual items when playing games. The virtual items may or may not provide a benefit in the game. Games are known to require the purchase of some virtual items in order for the users to obtain them. Games are known to facilitate the formation of alliances, groups, or team of users within the game. Games are also known to allow some users to excel at the game, while others do not. Some users of games are known to be big spenders, as they spend relatively more money in the game than other users of the game.